Matisseo Photo Book Publishing Service

Project Background

Matisseo is a popular French photo book publishing service. With Matisseo, a user can create, share and purchase photo books online.

In 2008, when Matisseo’s founder turned to Sibers, the service was already three years old. Our collaboration began with the implementation of sharing features within the existing website; seven years on and we’re now providing Matisseo with a full range of IT solutions that actively support the service’s growth and expansion.

When we started working with Matisseo, the service’s setup required downloading a Windows-only desktop application that generated a PDF, which was then automatically sent to the company’s server. This made it impossible for the user to preview how the photobook would look, or share it on the website with friends and family members.

Since a large part of Matisseo’s user base was (and still is) composed of photographers, the no-preview, no-sharing limitations were a huge obstacle which hampered Matisseo’s long-term growth. Another obstacle was the absence of Mac support, the favored platform of photographers worldwide.

Solution

Sibers provided the client with four solutions: in-site photo book sharing and preview functions, an online photo book editor, an order processing system, and prepress automation. To ensure optimum performance, HTML5 was heavily employed in the development of the album preview functionality. As a result, users got the opportunity to review their albums and share them within the platform or via email.

Developing an easy-to-use photobook editing web interface was essential for expanding the project’s audience. Most importantly, Matisseo had to offer several features that were platform-agnostic. Sibers’ solution allows a user to choose the photo book size and layout, upload photos and background images, and add different headers and signatures. In short, everything a user could want!

Order processing used to be a manual chore completed each morning — but Sibers’ solution has reduced manual labor by 20%. Also, within the business automation task we built a console application, intended for PDF imposition, which solved a combinatorial problem of optimum substrate fill.

In addition to all of the above, we improved other website components such as implementing new album attributes and related calculating functions (i.e. slip-over), revising the discount and coupon system, implementing a partnership program, building an internal bonus and incentive system, rebuilding the site on MVC and, the cherry on top, refreshing the overall design.

Tech highlights

Microsoft .NET Framework (C#)

ASP.NET

ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET WebAPI

Microsoft SQL Server

ADO.NET

Entity Framework

log4net/iTextsharp/Ghostscript

HTML5

CSS3

JavaScript

jQuery

CoffeeScript

Backbone.js

Underscore.js

Flash, ActionScript

Results

With Sibers help, Matisseo is now a huge multifunctional publishing platform available on myriad devices. The company’s new online editor provides designers, professional photographers and casual picture-takers with access to a powerful, best-in-class package.

The backend applications have reduced handwork, errors and enhanced the production effectiveness at least 5 times.

Customer Says

Thanks to my wonderful Sibers Team which include Alexey, Andrey and Vadim our new book creator tool (Matisseo Studio Online) is now live. This new tool was primarily designed to offer a software for Mac Users. They have been waiting for it since 2006 and we decided to build it on summer 2012. The work started in fall and a first beta version was release in the end of 2012. Today the v1 was installed with no issue thanks to the skilled team. (May 2013)

I have been very pleased by all aspects of the projects I have worked with Sibers. Great team! (October 2010)

I had no time to manage this project, it was done exactly according to my needs without using my time! (June 2009)

Second project with HireRussians and still extremely satisfied to work with them. This is a second success and I guess I am going to work with them for a while. I have already opened a new project with them! (February 2009)

The first project we did with HireRussians was a quiet simple. They had to learn about the existing project so it is always a bit uneasy to work with code you did not write. They did a good job even if we had to make some small modifications. They would have did it themselves but it was very fast to do (5mn work) and as we were in the integration stage we did it ourselves. They are very pro, very responsive, they understand fast the needs. I would recommend them! (February 2009)

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Clinical Trials Solution

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Business Owner

Work approach

Custom remote team

It is a software development outsourcing approach whereby the provider, after developing a deep understanding of the customer’s specific needs, forms a hand-picked team of developers, managers, testers and designers whose skill-set is a perfect match with those needs.

Platforms

Web

Numbering 60 web coders, Web Development is Sibers’ largest team and covers a wide platform range including PHP, ASP.NET, Java, Google Web Toolkit, and Node.js, along with client-side platforms like JavaScript, Ajax, jQuery, HTML5/CSS3, and Microsoft Silverlight. With such a large team, it isn’t surprising that there are five team leaders — one for each platform set, except for PHP, which has two.

Windows

Through the combination of varied development platforms and expertise was born the Desktop Software Development team. This crack squad’s abilities entail development for almost every popular operating system, including Mac OS X, Windows, Unix, and Unix-like systems such as Linux, Ubuntu and FreeBSD, together with cross-platform software development. Also, this team is highly trained in the complex field of embedded software development.

Cross-platform

Through the combination of varied development platforms and expertise was born the Desktop Software Development team. This crack squad’s abilities entail development for almost every popular operating system, including Mac OS X, Windows, Unix, and Unix-like systems such as Linux, Ubuntu and FreeBSD, together with cross-platform software development. Also, this team is highly trained in the complex field of embedded software development.